A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.

Directory Firms Dex One, SuperMedia File for Bankruptcy (Reuters)
Directories publishers Dex One Corp and SuperMedia Inc have filed for bankruptcy after failing to win the full support of senior secured lenders for a change to a credit agreement that was needed to complete their planned merger. Dex One and SuperMedia agreed last year to combine their businesses, with Dex One shareholders expected to own about 60 percent and SuperMedia shareholders the rest of the combined company.

What SMBs Need to Know About Facebook’s News Feed Redesign (Street Fight)
In the hopes of creating a better user experience (and ultimately more monetization opportunities), Facebook recently overhauled the design and functionality of its news feed — aiming to become the “personalized newspaper” of the digital age. The redesigned layout will include bigger photos, maps and news articles and users can now sort through feeds based on interests — so SMBs currently managing a page should definitely adjust the way they approach their Facebook marketing and creative strategy.

Foursquare Aims At A Moving Target As It Tries To Close Another Round Of Funding (TechCrunch)
Key people at Foursquare have stepped back from the company, some starting new ventures. The company has faced (unconfirmed) reports it is running out of cash — estimated to have a burn rate of $2 million and only $2 million in revenue last year, and (again unconfirmed) reports saying it has had trouble raising its next round of financing amid claims of a too-high valuation and question marks over its business prospects.

Alt-Weeklies Struggling — Can They Leverage SMB Relationships to Connect Online? (Street Fight)
Patrick Kitano: While alt-weeklies really used to own the market for irreverent commentary and events listings in cities around the country, the introduction of online competition over the past decade has really degraded their snarky monopolies. Tiffany Shackelford, executive director at the Association of Alternative Newsmedia (AAN), spoke to Street Fight recently about how alt-weeklies need to evolve their strategic thinking.

Flashlight Apps, Location and Why Consumers Still Don’t Understand Privacy (The Next Web)
Simon Bates: Have you ever wondered why something as simple as a flash-light app requests your location when you boot it up? It’s not out of curiosity or even necessarily to be helpful. It is the hallmark of a mobile app economy that’s based on a simple value-exchange: you get a useful app for free or next to nothing and in return the app provider collects your user data to monetise it in some way.

Study: Brands’ Spend in Mobile-Local Media to Eclipse Online in 2017 (Street Fight)
National advertisers will spend more local dollars on mobile than online media in 2017, according to a new study by BIA/Kelsey. The report projects that national spend on local-mobile media will increase six-fold over the next five years, jumping from $1 billion in 2012 to $6.4 billion five years later.

ESRI Takes Its Deep Mapping Software Online To Help Developers Become More Like Geographers (TechCrunch)
ESRI is turning to the cloud with ArcGIS Online as a way to give developers and people without a technical background, access to its vast geodata stores. Again, that data gives developers ways to create apps that help us navigate using virtual tools that will soon be, if not already, more predominant than the paper maps and atlases that many of us grew up with.

Retailigence Begins to Realize Promise of ‘O2O’ Marketing (Screenwerk)
Greg Sterling: The “Online-to-Offline” opportunity is at least 10X larger than e-commerce. That’s the massive prize local shopping platform and data provider Retailigence is pursuing. And after nearly four years the company may have found a model and sufficient momentum to realize its promise.

Could MyTime be a Groupon That Works? (PandoDaily)
MyTime aspires to be that very Web-based customer acquisition engine for small businesses. But it’s not relying on discounts and coupons to bring in customers — or at least it’s trying not to. Instead, MyTime wants to be an appointment booking site for time-pressed customers of salons, yoga studios, auto shops, and personal trainers.

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